Is it possible that the Dolchstoßlegende, or stab-in-the-back myth, is true?

The German leadership, and the German troops, knew they were beaten. They were stunned by the large numbers of Americans arriving every day. They were stretched too thin to hold the territory they had taken in Russia, and their troops there were being subjected to Bolshevik propaganda. Turkey had surrendered and Austria was on the verge of collapse, meaning the southern flank through the Balkans would soon be open for Allied troops there to advance unopposed. German manpower losses were enormous. The common soldiers knew that further resistance was useless--the German battle fleet, ordered to take to sea in what amounted to a suicide mission, mutinied.

The stab in the back myth has a couple origins. First, despite the tremendous suffering German civilians had endured through years of an Allied blockade, they had been told the people in Britain and France were rioting for bread. Despite the long casualty lists they had been told the Allies were down to their last few men. They had been fed years of lies, and when the armistice was announced so suddenly, the only conclusion they could draw was that Germany's leaders had failed. The common troops of course knew it was all lies. Toward the end of the war, even when they seized an Allied trench, they were disheartened by the well-stocked food larders they found there. They'd been told the Americans were useless in combat, and they saw that was a lie as well. So the army lost its will long before the home front.

Second, even though they had brought on defeat by their policies, Hindenburg, Ludendorff, and the General Staff did not want the army to appear to have lost the war. They carefully insured civilians were in positions of power when it came time to approach the Allies for an armistice. So the average German believed the army was willing to fight on, but cowardly civilians had sold out.

And the anti-Semitic angle was played later by Nazis and others peddling the stab in the back myth because one of the civilian leaders sent to negotiate at Versailles, was Jewish.

So Germany wasn't stabbed in the back.

Dolchstoßlegende

It's true, all of it

No, it's not.

Never heard of it. What?